A Lost Tooth

Jill's Journal: It was a momentous morning around here. Madelyn lost her third tooth. She was so proud of herself because she let the first two fall out on their own, but this one she actually pulled out.

Here she is, showing off the little hole in her teeth and the letter she wrote to her beloved Kristi and Adam about it. She had a list of about five people she wanted to write to share the exciting news, but she decided the first letter was plenty of work and lost steam immediately afterward. She asked me to take a picture instead so everyone could share it that way. Good thinking.

“Dear Kristi and Adam!
I had a loose tooth and I pulled it out!
Love Madelyn”

While Madelyn loves to share everything with everyone, Victoria is far more likely to say, “No paparazzi!”

Random Images of Grants Pass

Jill's Journal: North of Grants Pass is the lovely Grave Creek Covered Bridge, so named because the first emigrant wagon train from Idaho to this area camped here in 1846. A 16-year-old girl died of typhoid fever during the encampment and her fellow travelers buried her here before moving on. The name Grave Creek has stuck ever since.

We finally found the caveman! The 17-foot tall statue stands on a rock pedestal and apparently represents an unusual boosters club of sorts that dates back to 1922.

A painted bear…

…and a sweet girl enjoying the sunshine.

Madelyn, Erika, little Victoria, how does your garden grow? With sun and water, then we transport 'er, fresh herbs do we now know.

OK, so its a little corny, but the girls have really enjoyed their gardendom. In early spring, after a home-school lesson on how plants grow, I came up with a concept that we could, in fact, still have a garden on the road. If it were contained, small enough to transport yet still had enough space, it could be done. So I concocted the box-garden you see here. It is basically two tupperware tubs, one short, one taller (inside the short one), and one lid with holes drilled in it (to act like a greenhouse, when we started the seeds). I put in some river rock (collected on-site) then put a bag of potting soil over that and viola - garden. It left enough room for the plants to get about 12 inches tall, and plenty of soil to not need watering twice a day.

We started the project in Morgan Hill, CA the first week of April. I bought 6 packages of commercial seed packets at Walmart and then gave each of the girls their own two plots, and their own two packets. We sat down and planted them together. They loved to see the different sizes and shapes of the seeds. We even got to chat about how seeds are made and what it takes to make a plant from a seed. It was all very educational. :)

Madelyn chose Chives (she liked the purple flowers on the picture) and Cilantro. Erika had Spearmint (she LOVES mint) and Italian Parsley. Victoria got Basil and Oregano, and was happy just to be involved in the whole thing. The variety was mostly so that the girls could learn about the different rates things grow and how different the leaves look. Here you can see some of them sprouting. The Cilantro came up first, and strangely, they all kinda looked the same in the first few days.

I can still see Madelyn running back to the front door to scream "Mommy, Mommy, my plants sprouted!" the first time we could see leaves.

The girls loved touching the soft leaves and tasting the different flavors. So far, Madelyn LOVES chives. In fact, just about every time she walks by the garden she snaps one off and eats it. At least she's getting greens somehow...

At some point we needed to thin things out, and honestly, if we completely followed the plan there would only be one plant per square, so I've let some of it be a little overgrown. Oregano is still especially tight on space.

When we move it rides along nicely in the backseat of the truck, and then we bring it out first thing and find it a nice, sunny spot on the ground. Personally, I've loved having the cilantro and Parsley right there so that I can make one of our new favorite things - chimichurri. Unfortunately, it only grows so fast, so harvests are few and far between.

Overall, I'll call it a success if for nothing else than giving the girls the experience of growing their own garden, tasting different flavors, and understanding why things taste different. I've been told that when this experiment runs its course we need to do a flower garden. I think that's a fine idea, and it'll make the truck smell especially nice when we're treking from place to place.

It’s the Climate

Jill's Journal: We’re not entirely sure what is meant by the Grants Pass slogan, “It’s the Climate,” but we think it means it’s not too hot and not too cold. And let me tell you, after weeks of daytime temperatures in the 50s accompanied by frigid Pacific winds, we’ll take it. It’s supposed to be in the 70s for the rest of the week during the days and, amazingly for June (for us, anyway), still chilly enough (in the 40s) at night for a heater with such thin walls. What an improvement; a very welcome improvement. I hear on Facebook about friends back East suffering though sweltering heat waves and it actually sounds good since we’ve been in cool places for so long. We’ll be making a few trips to the coast, so we’d better not pack away our sweatshirts yet, but at least the shorts and sandals can officially come out and stay out!

Forty-eight hours into Oregon and we’re enjoying our first taste of the Pacific Northwest. It’s far more rustic than we expected. We’ve got our sightseeing planned for the next few weeks, so it’ll be interesting to see if the whole area is this rustic or just this town of about 35,000.

Grants Pass is believed to have been named in the 1860s to celebrate Ulysses S. Grant’s success in the Civil War at Vicksburg, yet it’s cavemen that seem to be all the rage around here. This is even called the Caveman Bridge and it’s supposed to be even prettier from the water. Supposedly there’s a large caveman statue somewhere in town, although we have yet to find it after a good bit of exploring already. We’ll be visiting the Oregon Caves soon to see what all the fuss is about.

One-Year Roadiversary!

Jill's Journal: Hands down, this is our very favorite photo of the entire first year of our journey. I take 99% of the photos for our family (which is why I’m rarely in them), but Rob took this gem. Oceano Beach, California, January 2011

And the other coast. Is there any child who doesn’t love the beach? We never dreamed we'd be playing on both coasts within the first year of our trip, but sometimes journeys like these take you to unexpected places. Assateague, Maryland, July 2010

Believe it or not, when we first started considering an extended road trip, we didn’t envision anything beyond a year. Today, as we celebrate our one-year “roadiversary,” that makes us laugh. With one year behind us, we literally feel like we’re only just getting started. There’s so much to see in this mighty country of ours that (Lord willing and the creek don’t rise) we’ll surely also surpass the three-year projection we had last year when we left Kentucky. That’s part of the beauty of an adventure like this…the sky is the limit.

With no further ado, we wanted to refer back to some the questions you asked and share just a few of the more significant photos from our first year on the road.

What was your favorite/least favorite "place"?

Favorite educational place -- Plymouth, Massachusetts. Wonderful.

Favorite touristy place – Chincoteague, Virginia.

Favorite all-around place -- Portland, Maine. Loved it, as well as all of Maine along the coast. Just incredible. Can’t wait to go back.

Least favorite place – Delaware, all of it. Never have to go back! --Jill and Rob

Heading east out of our adopted home state, ready to start the adventure of a lifetime. Somewhere east of Lexington, Kentucky, July 2010

Do you feel like you’ve learned anything this past year?

We’ve learned there are good people everywhere. Actually, my Mom has always said that, but I think we can really, really see it now. --Jill

Would you do it again (travel for a year)?

YES. No question about it. –Rob and Jill

Did you ever think about quitting?

Why yes, we did. Here’s a tip: don’t go a place with no hookups (meaning no air conditioner, no fans, and limited water) for seven nights during the hottest summer on record just a couple of weeks into your ‘still-figuring-out-this-RV-thing’ trip. As you melt into a puddle of misery for that endless week, you will curse the day you first thought this would be an adventure. If Maryland’s Assateague Island didn’t have wild ponies to remind us of how special it was, we wouldn’t have made it through that week of hell and very possibly would have thrown in the towel. --Rob and Jill

What do you like most about traveling?

I like that every day can be an adventure. You never know what’s around the next turn. And, by the same token, if you don’t like something, it’s not permanent. There’s always a next place. --Jill

When we started this trip, one of my goals was to show the kids all these different experiences so that they could know them instead of just read about them and I think we’re doing just that. -- Rob

The girls touching a chunk of Plymouth Rock. Awesome. Making their education come alive is what this trip is all about. Plymouth, Massachusetts, September 2010

What is the best improvement you've made to the RV?

Washer/dryer. --Rob (Jill SO agrees)

What was your favorite/least favorite campground?

Nothing will top the Van Peursem Barn in Orange City, Iowa…best place to stay ever. As far as our least favorite campground, none are perfect. Sometimes the spaces are really tiny, sometimes the staff is rude, and some are just plain weird and uncomfortable (Rhode Island!). We’ve come to find each campground has its own personality. Some places will always be great, some will always be bad, but the experience depends a lot on who is camping around you, what time of year it is (in season, out of season), etc. So many little things really dictate the experience. We could be in the same campground 25 spaces apart and might have a completely different experience. --Rob

When are you thinking about being done with this travel thing?

We’re not. --Rob

As the girls grow, we are going to miss moments like this. How special to be able to capture them now. Morgan Hill, California, April 2011

What is your greatest luxury on the road?

Oh my, I want to answer that one! Hands down, happiness is full hookups. With three kids, I hate when we don’t have hookups for more than a day and I have to ration every drop of water for even little things like toothbrushing and handwashing. That makes me miserable. I guess that proves I am not a natural camper in any sense of the word. –Jill

Is it bringing your family closer?

Without a lot of outside influences and separate groups of friends at school, we’ve seen some really special things with the girls’ relationships. They are truly each others’ very best friends. They do their share of bickering like any other siblings, but they are so tight with each other. It’s almost like I would imagine triplets to be – they’re just so close and would be completely lost without the others. That is an awesome thing for a parent to behold. --Jill

How does one celebrate one year of homelessness?

This is something we've found a lot of people ask us, and the answer is simply this. We have a home. We ARE home. We each sleep in our own beds every night, cook breakfast and dinner on the same stove, shower and occasionally shave in the same bathroom, and read bedtime stories on the same couch night after night. Our home is no different than anyone else's except that our backyard changes, the grocery store we shop in changes, and the places we get to see change more frequently than most everyone else. We are not homeless, we just have a bigger yard than you do. --Rob

Opportunities, opportunities. During our time at Laguna Seca, a pilgrimage of sorts for Rob, we came across a briefly-open gate to the racetrack. Even Garmin was urging Rob on – see the GPS proclaiming, “Driving on Laguna Seca”? It took a lot of self-control (and probably the threat of jail time) to pass this up. Salinas, California, March 2011

I guess you are heading north along the Pacific coast. Are you going into BC?

As much as we’d like to, we’re not planning to go to British Columbia this summer (there just aren’t enough months of decent weather for all the “northern” things we want to do!). We do hope to do all of the lower part of Canada after we “finish” the lower 48 states and we also hope to go to Alaska one summer, so BC will be on our list for one of those times. --Jill

Out of all the places you've been, if you had to choose right now, where would you move to and why?

We haven’t found it yet. --Rob

That wasn’t the question! If we had to choose from our journey so far, it would be either Southern Maine (near the coast) or Lexington, Kentucky (although Rob’s short list probably would not include Kentucky). I want a place that makes my heart sing – a place that’s beautiful, a place with wonderful people, a place that’s rural enough to feel we’re in the country but close enough to a decent-sized city to have a choice between grocery stores, a place where the girls can have opportunities ranging from 4-H to dance lessons, a place where we love waking up in the morning. Maine and Lexington are the two places I feel that most so far, but we haven’t been to Montana yet. :) --Jill

Like the Trace Adkins song, it’s not about the fishin’. Scarborough, Maine, October 2010

Goodbye, California!

Jill's Journal: Heading northeast on the 199 to the northern edges of California yields some of the most stunning scenery…it’s simply beautiful. It’s been an absolutely superb six months for us in the magnificent (and massive) Golden State, but we’re so excited to explore someplace new.

Hello, Oregon! (I’m doing alright at this picture-snapping-while-driving gig, aren’t I?) Our base for the next two weeks is Grants Pass. To our delight, our campground bill for the next two weeks (with 50 amp and full hookups) is far less than most of our one-week stays in California. In fact, it almost matches the lowest we’ve ever paid (which was off-season in Indiana). Oregon, we like you already!

Ocean World

Jill's Journal: This is Billy, a marine animal trainer, getting a big smooch from a California Sea Lion named Cora. The girls have declared Billy’s act with Cora and two Harbor Seals the “greatest thing ever.”

The girls and I almost skipped Ocean World in Crescent City today. It looks pretty cheesy on the outside, but the downfall of children who can read is that they knew it was a place they could pet a shark and they've desperately wanted to go all week. What a nice surprise it was.

Ocean World is a small, privately-owned aquarium originally opened in 1964 on a barge in the harbor. The barge has since been moved to dry land (and added onto). The only way to see it is via one of their guided tours, which turned out to be one of the most wonderfully interactive and entertaining tours we’ve ever been on. We started with the touch tidepools.

Then it was on to the shark and bat ray tanks.

After a few timid moments, the girls finally got to pet those sharks…

Again and again and again.

And then the best part – the seal and sea lion show. This is Marina, an ancient seal who was so old 13 years ago when she was rescued from a shark attack that she’d already lost all her teeth, and Skully, who is blind but doesn’t let it stop him. The girls laughed hysterically at all their antics and their hilarious “conversations” with Billy.

But Cora is the real star of the show. The 3-year-old sea lion can imitate dolphins, sharks, and Billy’s crabby, coffee-addicted boss. She break dances, plays ball, “talks,” plays fetch, you name it. The girls loved it, I loved it, and every other person on the tour also looked like they were having a ball. The girls haven’t been to Sea World yet, so they don’t have anything major league to compare it to, but they’re going to remember this a long time. For just pure fun, it was a home run.

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

Jill's Journal: After two months and several hundred miles in the redwoods, I wouldn’t say the gargantuan trees had lost their wonder for us, but they were definitely becoming a little less thrilling.

That is, until we went to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park today, the northernmost of California’s redwood parks. We went because we had heard, “THIS is the place. Prepare to be amazed.”

And we were. If someone only wanted to visit one redwood grove, I would recommend skipping Avenue of the Giants, Muir Woods, and anything else they’d ever heard of and coming to Jed Smith. It’s not the biggest; it’s not the most famous. But this is the crown jewel. It is beyond magnificent.

The spectacular Smith River dissects the park. It is the only major river in California without a dam. You can’t really tell from the photo, but it’s pure green in color and just sensational.

Here’s our intrepid little hikers navigating through predominantly old-growth redwoods. Established in 1929, Jedediah Smith is mostly untouched. It just feels natural and pure and wild. Other than a few trails cut through the park, everything is undeveloped.

Somewhere in this park, the three biggest redwoods in the world are located. All reaching close to 400 feet into the sky, they are unmarked to protect them from visitors.

The unpaved, one lane Howland Hill Road winds through Jedediah Smith. It is a gorgeous drive.

We always have fun spotting the burls, almost like warts, that grow on many of the oldest and largest trees. The girls thought this one looked like an old man sticking out his tongue.

The park’s namesake is the fur trapper who is credited for discovering the western side of the Rocky Mountains and for being the first white man to explore the interior of California (in the 1800s). His exploits all over the West are tremendous, but they include surviving three Indian massacres and one bear mauling. It was a group of Comanches that finally got him at age 32 when he left his traveling companions to scout for water (it kind of makes our blown-out tire a couple of weeks ago look a little elementary, doesn’t it?).

Rowdy Creek Fish Hatchery

Jill's Journal: Our “field trip” du jour led us to the Rowdy Creek Fish Hatchery near Smith River, California this afternoon. We were lured by the promise of free tours and learning a little about Steelhead and Chinook salmon.

In reality, all the tour entailed was being able to peek into the “ponds” that held over 50,000 young salmon who are about to be released. But that’s okay – not every field trip can be an adventure! The girls enjoyed it anyway and Madelyn tried her best to fall in. She even asked the manager if she could walk on the walls (like walking on a balance beam) that separated the ponds. Um, no. My answer came even quicker than his.

That’s a lot of fish. The hatchery tags every single one they release. I can't even imagine the man-hours that go into that.